When the pandemic put millions of U.S. workers out of jobs last year, systems to send federal funds to hungry families were put to the test. What resulted were certain innovations — like e-commerce access for needy families — that will outlast the current crisis.
The pressure to act quickly was intense, as the number of households receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the pandemic rose from 37 million to 43 million in 2020 in just a few months, according to the federal government. Many recipients also struggled to get to stores, which traditionally were the only way to get groceries through SNAP.
FIS, which is the nation’s largest provider of electronic funds for needy families seeking federal food benefits, took a hands-on role in driving SNAP's expanded reach plus adding permanent online store access for SNAP beneficiaries to all states.
FIS tackles these initiatives in 30 states whose SNAP programs it oversees, at a time when the Jacksonville, Fla.-based company’s own workers were mostly quarantined. The situation prompted FIS to form new collaborations and streamlined processes that became permanent, said Kim Bynan, FIS’ head of prepaid and government solutions.
“The good thing is that everyone on the team understood the purpose of so much coordination and so many late nights, which was getting money to people who needed it most,” Bynan said.
Complicating the task of quickly extending SNAP benefits to millions of new households was the fact that each state has a different approach to qualifying recipients.
“There’s no one-size-fits-all solution because no two states administer SNAP funds exactly the same way,” Bynan said.
Getting EBT cards to newly eligible households wasn’t the only challenge FIS faced during the crisis. FIS also manages a large P-EBT card program to reimburse needy families through SNAP for the cost of school lunches kids were denied when classrooms closed during the pandemic.
The federal P-EBT program recently was extended through September 2021 when President Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan into law, extending retroactive benefits to for all struggling families and adding needy kids under age 6 unable to access subsidized meals when daycare facilities closed.
To cover millions of new SNAP and P-EBT beneficiaries, Bynan set up a team of FIS employees to conduct granular research with thousands of agencies and schools to gather unique SNAP requirements from each state following federal guidelines. At each stage FIS developed new channels of communication to speed distribution of funds.
As a result of diverse organizations’ efforts, the federal government allowed a temporary waiver of interviews and streamlined telephone approvals to bypass an electronic signature to speed approvals of new beneficiaries, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit think tank analyzing federal and state budget policies.
In its work with SNAP and P-EBT recipients, FIS also saw a critical need for beneficiaries to be able to buy food with EBT cards online when they couldn’t make it to stores because of COVID-19.
But SNAP access to e-commerce channels was severely restricted. A pilot launched in New York in 2019 enabled SNAP beneficiaries to order groceries online through Walmart and Amazon, but it was only planned to expand to the state of Washington during 2020.
Worldpay, the global acquirer FIS purchased in 2019 for $35 billion, played a key role in driving SNAP acceptance at major retailers, including developing a solution to enable the four-digit PIN required for SNAP transactions at stores to be used securely online, according to Bynan.
“This was all new to all the parties involved, and there was a lot of coordination between the federal government, state agencies and retailers to get it done,” she said.
SNAP beneficiaries can now order groceries online through Walmart, Amazon, ALDI and regional chains ShopRite and The Fresh Grocer. Other supermarkets are being added monthly; BJ’s Wholesale Club was the latest retailer to add SNAP acceptance in March for in-store, pickup and curbside orders.
“We’ve learned a lot during the pandemic about adding merchants to the SNAP program to the point where we can do an integration in as little as 30 days now,” Bynan said.
The pandemic is starting to abate but FIS is still working under extenuated conditions, serving a large base of SNAP users through its call centers for managing distribution and trouble-shooting.
Most of FIS’ call center employees are still working from home offices, through secure systems.
“Training and hiring — it all happens remotely,” Bynan said. She did not provide a timeline for when FIS expects an end to remote operations.
Many of the lessons FIS learned are still being evaluated, but overall there were many positives, she said.
“Despite being remote, we found many departments within FIS worked more closely to roll out new EBT solutions, and we created new channels for working with state governments and schools that we’re using now to manage these systems more efficiently,” Bynan said.
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